Whooping Siamangs in Dubbo Zoo

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Why I love New Zealand

And why you should come to New Zealand for UNICON XV

Cheesy Ad, but one of my favourite songs

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Sipping Tea in the Himalayas

It’s been a several years since I was last in the Himalayas, but being here again is like being reunited with an old friend.

I find myself sitting on the balcony of our guesthouse, in the crisp mountain air, sipping a steaming cup of tea.  The mountain ranges are shrouded in mist.  A monastery lies in the distance with prayer flags flapping in the breeze.

Down in the village, the locals, made up of mostly Nepali people, start their day busily preparing their shops to open.  Few kids are up yet.  There is a guy emptying a bucket of water on the cobbled street.  A old man carries two armfuls of something up the road.  A shop owner sweeps his front porch.  A plume of smoke from what looks like a small campfire rises in the distance.

The town of Lava in the Indian Himalayas is built on the side of a mountain, with impossibly steep winding streets and buildings perched precariously on its side.

It’s an incredible feeling to be here.

For more information visit: www.induni.adventureunicyclist.com

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Air New Zealand

Wow, is it just me or have the seats gotten bigger?  I’ve been meaning to comment on this for sometime,  but better late than never.  If you’ve flown on this airline in the last few months, you’d notice that there is enough wiggle room for even the largest derriere.  Y0u’d have to be bordering on morbidly obese to fit snugly into  one of these things.  And the space…oh the space!  I have to lean forward to eat my meal.  I can hardly reach the touch screen on the entertainment system.

I like Koru Club too…if you have to sit in an airport for hours there’s nothing like going to your little exclusive lounge with a good wine and a newspaper.  And now I don’t have to pay for it.  My Star Alliance Gold card arrived today, so I now have a choice of Airline lounges to sneak into.  I’m beside myself with glee!

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Macau

We stop by Macau on the way back from China.  It is a city full of casinos, bars, hotels, hot women, and over-the-top bling.  You could be lost in the dazzle and glitz for a week, and still feel like you’ve only just arrived.

What do I mean by over the top?  There  is a place called the Venetian.  It’s a casino on the bottom floor.  On the top floor is St Marks Square (modelled from Venice…obviously), complete with canals, gondoliers, and artificial sky.  Yep, it even had my mum fooled.  Who needs to go to Venice anyway?

I decide that I might come back to Macau for a holiday every year.  Even if I don’t gamble.

I went for a blat around Macau on a unicycle too.  That was fun.

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You didn’t see me stir my coffee with chopsticks

I almost choke on the thick sooty atmosphere as we arrive in China.  We are in Quanzhou, an industrial city in Fujian Province.  My granddad was born not far from here, in Nan’an.  Everywhere there are new roads, new buildings, and new factories pumping soot into the air.   The locals all seem to be in a rush somewhere, including a number of suicidal motorists driving down the motorway in the wrong direction!

Our hotel is across the road from a Lake.  A rather picturesque lake that smells suspiciously of sewage.  A guy is fishing there, oblivious to the wafting aroma.

Don’t get me wrong…there is a lot to like about China.  But these were my first impressions as a tourist.  And Quanzhou is not a tourist town.  Like many cities across China, it is forging ahead with single-minded industrialisation into the 21st century.

Bamboo Rafting down the Li River

We did fly inland to Guilin afterwards, which was a much more tourist friendly place.  The air was fresh, the locals sold us trinkets and souveniurs, and we went bamboo rafting down the Li River. 

But back to more interesting stuff.  You can tell alot about a place by the food it serves.  The Chinese eat just about anything that moves, and just as many things that don’t.   Fujian food…..rice porridge for breakfast, lot’s of preserved salty vegetables, various boiled and fried greasy things of dubious origins.  Some of it is delicious.  I find it odd that rice is not generally served in restaurants…you have to ask for it.  Apparently rice is more a Cantonese thing.  The coffee is awful.  They don’t drink it here, and if they do, it’s mixed with condensed milk.  I stir it with a chopstick.

At night there is an opera performance on the Lake.  If there is one thing worse than running your fingernails down a blackboard, it is the sound of Chinese opera.  It is truly awful.  And not just any grade of awful, it is a cross between someone with the lungs of Celine Dion and the rhythm of a mating bullfrog.

Now the purpose of the trip was to visit my Grandfathers birthplace in Nan’an.  We drove up there with the whole extended family.  My Granddads sister has been busy getting the place rebuilt.   My Great-Grandfather made many trips to Malaysia to work and send money back to China in the early 1900′s.  He bought a plot of land, which unfortunately seemed to have been taken over by squatters.  Yes, people just come on your land and build houses on it, because you’re not there to stop them!

We also visit the Ng Family memorial next to a monastery in Quanzhou.  It goes back 1300yrs, and almost 5million descendants can trace their ancestry back here.

The mind boggles.

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Disneyland Hong Kong!!!

…..is awesome!

Just how awesome? Well you just have to be there to experience it. I’ve resolved not to blog about it, I wouldn’t do it justice.  I got to meet some really cool Disney stars, including Tarzan, Alice in Wonderland, Snow White, Mickey and Donald, and many others.  Everybody who is or has ever has been a kid should go there.

Ivana in Disneyland

Alice is hawt!

Me and cousin Elle in Disneyland

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Family Pilgrimage

We’re having a family reunion.  Kind of.  Although it’s probabably more a pilgrimage to see where we came from.  It’s something everybody should do.

My granddad was born in China, but left with my great-grandad to Malaysia when he was ten.  There is a family home in Nan’an, near Quanzhou in Fujian Province.

It’s funny how many people assume that because you’re Chinese, you must be from China.  None of us have ever been to China.  And most of us left Malaysia when I was a kid.

So here I am in Hong Kong.  My grandads Sister lives here.  She talks in three languages and dialects.  Very very fast.  And mixes the words.  So a sentence will start off in Hokkien, interspersed with Mandarin and Cantonese, some Hakka thrown in, and bit’s of English.  Oh, that’s five!  I have a job trying to figure out what she’s saying.  She has been busy rebuilding the family residence in China.  Not that any immediate family reside there, just some distant cousins.

So Hong Kong…..Let me just say it’s one of the busiest places I’ve ever been in.  The streets are a swarm of people.  The shopping is good.  I have been busy stocking up on many things I don’t need!  We went to Stanley Park, then had lunch in Kowloon.  I attempt to practice my very rusty Cantonese, only to have the shop assistent roll her eyes and talk back to me in English.

Meh.  I’ll figure it out by the end of this trip.

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Airports

Airports are one of my favourite places.  Even the really awful ones.  Like London Heathrow and LAX.  They are not just a hub for air travel, they are a heterogenious mixture of people.  Like a salad bowl, containing fruit salad. Only it’s not fruit, it’s people.

Funny looking people, some with frizzy hair, some with no hair, some fat, some skinny, dark people, pale people, smelly people, and people that could grace a magazine cover.  I like watching them. Figuring out where they come from, where they’re going, and what their lives must be like.

I love their accents too.  Even godawful ones like the Aussies and Malaysians.  And Kiwis too.  We talk funny.  Real funny.  I did a round the world trip once.  Then got home and heard the New Zealand accent for the first time in four months.  We sound like chimps.

Airports are part of the travel experience.  I hate being a tourist, going from A to B, for the sole intention of getting to your destination.  Getting there to take photos of yourself at some famous monument, buying the local trinkets and souveniurs, and then jumping back on the bus.

To me, the destination itself is secondary.  It’s how you travel, the odd, crazy and often stressful experiences you have along the way.  Airports are part of that.  From the US airports where you are treated like a virtual terrorist, to the welcoming experience of Singapores’ Changi Airport, to the complete disaster that is Copenhagen airport, and the welcome home familiarity of Auckland and Wellington airports.

I love them.

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